


beyond the pale

by pallasathene



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Femdom, Humiliation, Neurodivergent Roman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:47:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27786976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasathene/pseuds/pallasathene
Summary: Roman's shame is eating him alive. Gerri is just trying to keep her hands to herself.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	beyond the pale

_Was he – you know – with the turtle?_

Yeah, Gerri had smiled. That was Baird. The turtle had outlived him and would probably outlive her too. He’d got it as a hatchling in the late eighties, when it was small enough to cup inside his two hands. A light brown shell, solemn little eyes and mouth, stumpy legs. Sometimes it felt to Gerri like he paid more attention to the damn turtle than to her, and it hadn’t helped that he’d named it Michelle after the actress Michelle Pfeiffer because Dangerous Liaisons had just come out. And it was a shell pun, naturally.

He took Michelle to work once or twice and let her roam around on his desk, feeding her bits of lettuce throughout the day. Soon everyone knew about her, until they were swimming in turtle themed gifts that arrived every birthday and Christmas. Books on turtles, turtle paperweights, or the turtle tie that was his favourite.

Now Gerri looks after Michelle. It’s like a little ritual every day after work. Refill her food, her water, clean her cage. Sometimes she takes her out and lets her crawl around on the couch next to her while she has a drink and watches the news. Gerri used to complain when Baird did this, saying he would crush the poor thing. But now she does it too, and it feels like being close to Baird. She hadn’t really minded when Baird did it. It was endearing. Or maybe she just remembers it differently now.

When Baird died, she’d downsized, moved to a smaller apartment and got rid of most of his stuff. There’s no use being sentimental. She threw herself into her work. She doesn’t know if she can ever move on to someone else. Getting to know someone new after a whole life with Baird? It’s less about her emotions and more about not having the time.

If she’d had to guess, she’d have said that Roman’s biggest turn on was doing lines of cocaine off the breasts of an exotic dancer, or something similar that she really does not need to know about. So her shock during their phone call was genuine. She’d thought about it afterwards, turning it over in her mind, trying to work out why Roman had done what he’d done. For the first couple of seconds, she wondered if it was some power play from his side, but then she’d heard the way his voice sounded when she called him a pig. The way he’d asked for more. The way she, to even her own surprise, had wanted to give him more. She’d wondered if it was just the novelty that turned him on, just a one-off for that night that they would never speak of again. But all the same, she couldn’t help thinking there was something deeper.

Maybe it isn’t so surprising. Anyone can see how lost he is. Anyone can see the self-doubt that he tries to cover up with jokes and snide remarks. And the revelation at dinner with the Pierces that he wasn’t sleeping with his girlfriend was interesting to say the least. What Gerri had said to him on the phone cut through the ego he’s built up. When he visits her in her room she takes it further, commanding him, seeing how far she can go. She loves the expression on his face, when his chin is tilted down and his eyes look up at her. She loves the tone of his voice when all the mockery and venom goes out of it, when it’s small and soft. She loves how she’s the one to make him do that, how she can turn him into someone no one else sees.

Playing with him like that is the most fun she’s had in a while, but she sets herself a boundary that she mustn’t touch him. As long as it’s just words, with a phone line or a door between them, then it’s alright. But she wants to touch him. When he comes to her room in bare feet and a white t-shirt, she wants to kiss his neck and feel the warmth of his skin. When he looks up at her as she’s telling him how ashamed his family would be of him, she wants to cup his face in her hand. When he’s upset, she wants him to rest his head in her lap and to stroke his hair. Even though she wants to roll her eyes at almost everything he says, even though he acts like an asshole most of the time, she wants him.

She doesn’t know how long it will be before she breaks her rule.

***

Roman hates feeling a hand on his thigh, or hearing his girlfriend’s voice go low and slow. He hates this moment, when he has to make an excuse or push her away, but it’s ten times better than the alternative. He doesn’t want to do the whole dance, the kissing and the touching and taking off clothes, and confront his failure to even get an erection. So he shuts down, doesn’t talk about it, rather than admit that when he’s faced with a pretty girl who wants him to sleep with her, when she’s right there in front of him, there’s simply nothing about it that turns him on.

When he masturbates – and he does, frequently – it’s pure physical release. It’s satisfying, but his mind feels disconnected from it all. Sometimes he tries things, like jerking off in his office pressed up against the glass, looking down on all the rat race drones below. But it’s a temporary amusement. He never bothers to try it again.

His father always made him feel like he was weak. The runt of the litter, the rotten apple. Roman was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but he knows better than to talk about it. When they got the news his father said it was bullshit, and always implied that Roman was just a bad, disobedient kid. His mother couldn’t accept it either, saying it was American nonsense, invented to sell pills. Both of them maintained that he would grow out of it. He never did. Sometimes, at his lowest moments, he wonders if they were right. Maybe he is just stupid. His father came from poverty and built a billion-dollar business from the ground up. Meanwhile, Roman is in the nursery school that is management training, learning about employee morale and customer satisfaction, and he still can’t maintain focus throughout the entire session. So he acts like he doesn’t give a shit, like his father’s put downs are water off a duck’s back, and he lays into Kendall as though his brother is a flaccid punching bag.

Logan thought military school would toughen him up, make a man of him. He wasn’t weaker than Kendall, not really. His emotions were just closer to the surface, boiling over at the worst moments. Maybe Roman had thought St. Andrews would be good for him too. Learning to shoot a gun and being far away from the rest of his family were attractive prospects, but it was easy to forget that once he was there. Military school had been hell. He’d barely even felt rich there, where everyone had to look the same, dress the same, stick to the same tight schedule, days planned out down to the minute.

He’s had years of therapy, of course, with several different therapists he leaves as soon as they get too deep. He’s become practiced in making them think they’re uncovering something huge, making them think they’re so clever for figuring him out, when really he’s not letting them in at all. For the hour that he’s in there, he’s the most thoughtful, reflective person you’ll ever meet, spouting bullshit like a fertiliser tractor. Why even go? Maybe it’s just so he can prove that if even they can’t see how fucked up he really is, no one else would have a chance.

He thinks back to when he’d said ‘Ew’ when Tabitha had told him she’d slept with Naomi. The noise had escaped his lips before he could stop it. He hoped she just thought he was some run-of-the-mill homophobe, rather than a weirdo whose below-average sized dick couldn’t even get hard at what he assumed was every man’s fantasy of two hot blonde girls licking each other’s pussies, or whatever. When he and Tabitha had tried phone sex, for a moment he’d even been excited about it. If seeing her in front of him put him off, maybe just talking to each other could be a way to ease into it. But then even her talking about how wet she was put him off, and he got fed up and cut the line.

The night that Roman and Tabitha try to have sex is the night they had dinner with the Pierces, when she told everyone they don’t screw. Roman tried to play it off as a joke, but they all heard. His father heard. Bingo, bango, bongo. He tries the necrophilia thing because sure, why not – clearly he’s fucked up, as his phone call with Gerri showed him. With the lights out he can barely see Tabitha, and if she stays quiet and still maybe he can pretend she’s not even there. But then she turns the bedside lamp on, and his soft cock is bumping aimlessly around the entrance to her vagina, and he’s tired and pissed off and this is just another shitty thing in this shitty day.

Gerri calls him a rotten little nothing, and he wants that, wants to be nothing. He wants his head to go quiet and for Gerri to tell him who he is and what he has to do. Gerri doesn’t take shit, and she always says what she means. But she cares, too, beneath all the cocked eyebrows and the sarcasm. When she calls him pathetic, a disgrace, a disappointment, it’s such a fucking relief, her telling him what he has always known deep in his bones. And for some fucked up reason it’s hot, too. She tells him he’s a sick fucking animal and it’s like electricity down his spine, making him feel more alive than he has in he doesn’t know how long. It’s hot in a way that makes him delirious, makes his cock hard instantly, makes him want to do whatever she says – which only makes him feel more pathetic, like a hot fucked up feedback loop forever.

When he cums, rubbing himself fast and thrusting into his hand, his cum gets on his fingers and the door, but he doesn’t care. It feels so good, better than cumming against the plate glass window of his office or in the shower the previous night. He has a thought as he cums that he immediately tries to suppress: he wants Gerri to tell him well done, that he did good, that she’s proud of him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I will write hot sexy femdom fic! Me: immediately writes 300 words about Gerri’s dead husband’s turtle.


End file.
